Thursday, November 19, 2015

Lovisa
was the first to find the bard, leaning against an old oak tree in
the woods surrounding the training fields. The fields were dormant,
free of training manikins, and the only sound was that of the
haphazard chords Sanjaia mechanically strummed out on his harp. His
eyes were wide, fixated on the distant image of the golem's massive
body lying in the grass, but his face was as stony as the carved face
of a statue. Lovisa had never seen him like this before. She called
out to him, and he regarded her with a disconcertingly broken smile.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she approached him.

“I
am alive, thankfully,” Sanjaia said, “as are you.”

“Thankfully,”
Lovisa said. “But look at you! You're so...”

“I'm
frightened,” he told her. “I've never had such an experience, not
in my entire life! It makes me wonder if I'm really made for this,
and quite frankly, I don't think I am.” His fingers fluttered
rapidly over the harp strings as if they had been shocked.

“But
you held out so well!” Lovisa said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
The man was trembling like a frightened animal, and she could feel
the pounding of his heart. “I watched you out there,” Lovisa went
on, “and well, the two of you knew exactly what to do. You...”

“I
didn't know what to do at all,” Sanjaia reminded her. “It was all
Eluani! She
knew what to do, I was only following her orders. If she hadn't been
there...” His body tensed, and his hands tightened around the harp.
“I would have been done for!”

“But
she was
there,”
Lovisa said. “Sanjaia, you can't think about what might have been
or what could have happened, because it didn't
happen! What did happen is that the two of you fought and you won! It
was the first fight against a real enemy—a real, dangerous
enemy—and you made it! We all did!”

Sanjaia
looked at the ground, and the next chord he strum out wouldn't have
been out of place in a dirge. “Of course I'm thankful for our
lives,” he said, “but I don't feel victorious—far from it. And
I cannot bring myself to care about a win. I feel small, vulnerable,
and like I must hold on tightly to my life before it's taken from me!
I don't feel as if I can live this way, Lovisa. I cannot
live this way! My life was peaceful and mundane, and my greatest
adventure was the daily quest for a new stage to perform my music. I
liked it that way, and this I just can't take!”

“Get a hold of yourself,
fool!” Morgana scolded, coming up behind him. Sanjaia turned
around, and his face lit up at the sight of her and Eluani looking
just as well as they had before the fight. “Morgana!” he cried.
“You're all right!” He threw his arms around her, and though her
first instinct was to pull back, she decided to allow it in lieu of
the circumstances. “I'm just fine,” she said, “and you're
carrying on like a fool. Just what did you think it would mean to be
a knight? Of course there will be peril! Of course there will be
times when we will stand on the brink of death! You agreed to give
your life for the protection of the Jewel, and that is exactly what
you're going to do, right along with the rest of us!”

“I cannot do it!”
Sanjaia cried, dropping his harp and wrapping his arms around
himself. “When I entered this, I did not take into account that I
am simply not made for this kind of thing!”

“If I am made for it,”
Lovisa told him, “then you certainly are.”

“You're so much stronger
than me,” Sanjaia said. “You may not feel that way, but you
really are!”

“It doesn't matter who is
stronger than what!” Morgana said firmly. “Nobody is going to bow
out of this, and that includes you! No one can take your place—there
can be no other Knight of the Citrine! You go, and each and every one
of your strengths goes with you! And, as proven by that battle with
the golem, there are going to be times when you will be required! Are
you willing to betray all of us, along with the Jewel and the kingdom
of Rasta, just to give in to fear?”

“I
don't want to betray anybody!” Sanjaia said mournfully. “But...the
thought of dying out here is just too much! It's overwhelming! I
cannot die! There's still so much that I mean to do and so much that
I mean to see, and so much music that I have yet to share with the
world!” Oh,
lights, thought
dismayed Morgana, the
man has broken out in tears! If he doesn't cut the dramatics, it will
take all I have not to kill him myself!

“Then
fight, Sanjaia,” Eluani said solemnly. “In war, the only way to
stave off death is to fight. If you give up, you will surely
die. But if you turn that fear of death into your driving force, then
you will have a much better chance of coming out alive.”

“I have never fought a
day in my life!” Sanjaia lamented.

“That's a lie,” Morgana
said harshly, “and you know it! You just spent the afternoon
fighting—and winning—against a colossal golem! Who are you to
tell anybody that you can't fight?”

“The urge to survive is a
strong one, Sanjaia,” Eluani told him, laying her hand on his back,
“and it exists in each and every one of us. Nobody wants to die,
even when death is all around. You will fight when you must;
everybody does.”

There was no viable way to
transport a golem of such proportions; the core was to be extracted
and the body examined right there in the field. Cordelia arrived with
Rasta's knight master and four of his knights, the master alchemist,
arcane master, and head magician from the palace, and a small army of
Rasta's scientists, public officials, and magitech experts. All eight
Knights of the Jewel gathered around as well, but Cordelia dismissed
them. “I would like it if you rested after a battle with such an
enemy,” she told them. “If there are any others, then I and my
forces will take care of them.”

“But you will tell us who
sent this beast?” Ion inquired.

The princess' face grew
dark. “I'm sure that I already know who sent it,” she said
grimly, “but yes, any information will be passed along to you.”

The
knights returned to their chambers, and there was nothing to do but
wait. There were still a few hours of sunlight left, but Lovisa
didn't ride her automaton horse through the countryside. Alicia
declined to go out for a romp through the woods and the fields.
Sanjaia wouldn't play his instruments, not even to belt out a few
nonsense chords. Even Morgana would not retire to the cellar to
practice keeping control of her magic. The tension in the air around
them was too great to even think about doing anything. What they did
think about, and couldn't shake from their minds, were the princess'
words--”I'm sure that I know who sent it.” Harkinian.
This
had been a direct attack on the Jewel a mere week after the arrival
of the knights. Did Harkinian know that the knights would be there,
or had he expected his golem to stomp right in and collect the Jewel
without a fight? Of
course he hadn't, thought
Troy as he paced his room. If
he didn't think there would be any resistance, then he wouldn't have
sent that implacable walking tank. The
idea sent a shudder through his bones. Harkinian was aware of them,
and even knew that they were there, but how?

To
Eluani, it made perfect sense that Harkinian was aware of the
knights' presence—there was no way that he wouldn't
be
made aware of them after the song and dance that had been made of
their arrival at the capital alone. Who knew what sort of ridiculous
shows he rest of the country put on about it? Eluani was annoyed with
Rasta as a whole for such a preposterous fanfare; had it ever
occurred to anyone at all that the news would travel, as news is wont
to do? Had it ever occurred to anyone that the man must have spies
planted among them? That golem had not arrived with the sole
intention of capturing the Jewel. It was meant to take them out, and
now that it had failed, Harkinian would need to find another way to
do it...

Rodin thought that the
golem must have been a test, an iron adversary meant for Harkinian to
determine the strength and competence of his new opponents. If this
was Harkinian's first assault—and it was almost certainly
Harkinian's first assault—then he had been made aware of the
knights' existence before they had even arrived. Word had traveled
into Aldine, perhaps via spies walking among the citizens of Rasta,
that a personal army was to be assembled to protect the Jewel. Such a
piece of news would itself serve as a call to action for Aldine's
forces. The Jewel would have an army, Harkinian would have an
opponent, and now he meant to see just how formidable this opponent
would prove. Now that it was determined that the Knights of the Jewel
were not to be trifled with, there would be many more attacks from
much stronger forces than a colossal golem. Rodin shuddered.

Dinner was served before
any news arrived, and as such it was a tense and dismal affair. The
knights ate only out of obligation, though they found it very hard to
stomach, and no conversation was made; even the ever-talkative Lovisa
said very little. When the concerned servants questioned them, Ion
told them simply that they were waiting anxiously for news and did
not need to be troubled over. Sunset was nearing its end when
Cordelia finally arrived with the news that broke the silence: “The
golem's core has been extracted and thoroughly examined, and...”

“And it's Harkinian's,”
Rodin finished. Cordelia nodded.

“So what do we do now?”
Sanjaia asked.

“You continue your
training,” Cordelia said. “This was inevitable; we've anticipated
this since Harkinian's declaration. The Jewel anticipated it, and
that is why it sent for you. It's very lucky that you made it here
before he made his first attack.”

“He made his attack
knowing full well that we're here,” Eluani told her. “It wasn't
luck, he was simply biding his time.”

“Is that what you think?”
Cordelia asked, her eyes widening in alarm.

“It's what I know,”
Eluani said. “There is no more speculation involved. Harkinian made
his first attack on us as well as the Jewel.”

“Well, you're here to
fight and defend,” Cordelia said, “and now the time has come to
rise to that task. As always, train as you fight. There will still be
manikins. You will still have the opportunity to practice. But now
there will be real enemies, and they are unlikely to operate in the
way that manikins do. You must keep your guard up at all times, and
your eyes open for anything that doesn't seem right. Above all,
remember that this is what you are all here for. The Jewel does not
make hasty decisions, and it had a reason for choosing all of you.”

They were left to sleep on
the princess' words that night. When Lovisa passed by Sanjaia's door
on her way to say goodnight to her comrades and the Jewel, she could
hear the war song of the singing trident as he twirled it
energetically through the air. She smiled.

So, Rasta was so desperate
to keep the Jewel to themselves that they had organized an entire
army for the Jewel alone. Of course they had; the Jewel ensured that
Rasta had the resources for such an endeavor. They could organize a
dozen armies if they were so inclined. Still, Harkinian had not
entirely anticipated this. He knew that there would be plenty of
opposition. What he didn't know was that he would have to tangle with
a brand new army of soldiers that he knew very little about. He only
knew what his informants had told him: they were a peculiar group of
men and women who appeared to have been taken in from some faraway
land, it was debatable that all of them were even human, and by the
looks of them they would do about as well in an army as a small child
would. There was an astonishingly beautiful woman illuminated like a
falling star, there was a glossy-haired man who carried a decorated
harp, there was a tall and willowy young lady with pointed elven
ears, and there were two fresh-faced youngsters who looked just
barely out of their teens. Harkinian swallowed his amusement as he
listened to this recaps, and when they had said all that they needed,
he allowed himself to laugh. This was Rasta's answer to his
declaration? A bard, an elf, two children, and a light-up beauty
queen? It was utterly ridiculous, and it wasn't until that night, as
he paced his chamber and pondered the logic of organizing such a
ragtag army, that he began to give it any real thought. Regardless of
appearance or even of age, it was dangerous to underestimate anyone
who was to be called a soldier. Unlikely warriors existed, hiding
master-level skill sets beneath their unlikely appearances. It was
entirely possible that these so-called “knights” would prove to
be formidable opponents. If they were harboring hidden depths, he
would have to uncover them before he could truly act.

And in doing so, he had
discovered that he had indeed underestimated them. His golem had not
returned, which meant that they had managed to either stall it or
defeat it. Of course, he hoped for the former, but he knew that the
latter was much more likely. The golems of Aldine, a technology
passed down from the reign of Harkinian's grandfather, were
unstoppable tanks that had the ability to stall but were not
explicitly designed to. They were employed in situations where force
was required and opposition was anticipated, but a fight would be
impractical. Now he knew that it would be necessary to dispatch more
offensive forces. Still, there was plenty that he did not know about
these peculiar knights—above all, the nature of their abilities.
Even if the golem had returned, he thought with a sigh, it wouldn't
have been able to inform him of the nature of the knights' abilities.

Of course, if the golem had
returned, there was a decent chance that it would have come with the
Jewel wrapped up in its steely fingers...

Training was no longer
exciting in the way that it had been in the days before. The
adrenaline rush now came from the fear, the vigilance, the
ever-increasing feeling of being watched by some invisible,
threatening entity. The movements, however subtle, of every manikin
in the distance were ominous—after all, when was a manikin not a
manikin? Alicia had made the difficult decision to abandon the
shuriken blaster without learning to decipher the messages in its
runes. As much as she cherished the weapon and longed to learn its
secrets, she couldn't afford to fumble over it in the heat of an
enemy assault. It would be dangerous to falter.

Alicia shuddered as she
watched over the countryside from her treetop perch, keeping a
lookout for any threats. A manikin was nothing like a real enemy, she
realized as she watched her comrades accost and eliminate one after
another. Their movements were mechanical, their actions were
predictable, and though they put up a decent fight, they were pretty
easily overpowered. They were meant for honing combat skills and for
getting a feel for one's weapon, and for that they were just fine.
But as an imitation of an enemy, they missed the mark by far. A real
enemy could be anything. There had been no manikin to prepare them
for that golem, after all. Alicia pushed the manikins from her mind
and relegated them to animated pieces of the scenery, no more
significant than the phragmites and the trees and the dirt roads that
seemed much longer than they had before.

At the base of the tree,
Sanjaia paced back and forth. His right hand rested on the handle of
the singing trident, which sat quietly in its hold and waited to be
called upon. His heart had raced since the fight with the golem three
days ago, only ceasing when he slept. Like Alicia, he mentally
relegated the training manikins to part of the scenery. Enemies were
in the picture now, and they were all that mattered. They were all
that he could focus on. He only wished that focusing on them didn't
make his heart race quite so much.

“Do you see anything?”
he asked Alicia, who had been perched in the tree in the same
position for the good part of an hour. She had endured repetition of
the same question for the duration of her perch. “Ion and Troy are
fighting with a few manikins,” she answered rather boredly, “and
nearby them, Lovisa is practicing with her staff.”

“Are you sure it's only
manikins harassing Ion and Troy?” Sanjaia asked, his hand tightening around the trident. “Maybe we should go out there.”

“Don't be hasty!”
Alicia chided him. “They are only manikins, and I can tell by the
way they conduct themselves.”

“Right,”
Sanjaia said with a weary sigh. “I'm sorry, Alicia.” He shook his
head, trying to clear away the tears that had begun to form in his
eyes. “It's just...oh, what have we become?”

“We have become
soldiers,” Alicia said bluntly, and left it at that. They had
become soldiers in a world where danger was all around. Sanjaia
admired the will of the elven princess, who had never had to fight a
day in her life except for sport. He had never heard her speak so
sternly or with such confidence and certainty in her voice. Something
had changed in her since the day of their arrival, and it was a
change that made him feel protected under her watchful eye. Though
his heart still raced, he didn't feel the need to pace anymore. He
unstrapped his lute and began to run his fingers over the strings.
The sound cheered him and brought back memories of a time when all he
ever had to do was play for a room full of smiling faces—had it
really only been a week since then? It seemed like so much longer.

This lute was nothing like
the lute that he had used then. It was crafted of painted metal
rather than wood, decorated with elaborate appliques of leaves and
birds, and of course inlaid with a single citrine that pulsed in sync
with the notes he played. The peaceful, contented feeling that came
to him almost immediately was as much a result of the Jewel's magic
as it was the natural joy that the music brought to him. The lute was
a weapon as well as an instrument, but when there was no need for
either, then it was a healing device.

Mixed in with the sound of
the notes, a rapping sound began faintly and then increased in volume
and energy. It sounded like somebody was knocking on wood. Sanjaia
stopped playing, a the knocking sound ceased with the music. He
looked to all sides of him and reached for the singing trident.

“You mean this?” Alicia
rapped her palm against the branch that she sat on. “Yes, that was
me. I'm sorry if it scared you! But I can't exactly dance while I'm
up here, so this is the least I can do. Now keep playing! I liked
it!”

So Sanjaia played, starting
out calmly to settle his own nerves, and then building up to a merry
jig. Alicia added the sound of happy wood-knocking, keeping in time
with the music as if she was playing her own percussion instrument.
He looked up at her and saw that she was grinning from ear to ear,
her eyes sparkling, her head happily rocking from side to side. He
was relieved to see that Alicia hadn't changed so very much since the
day sh had danced merrily to the music of his harp.

Ion's automaton horse made
its way through the phragmites swiftly and mechanically, the tip of
his expanding lance prodding for any enemies in their midst. Troy
brought up the rear, his horse keeping a steady pace with the
knight's. The silence that had befallen the fields would have been a
comfort just a few days ago, but now was ominous enough to reduce
them both to shudders. Any number of things could be concealed in
that silence. Back in the Arcadian army, Troy and his comrades were
prone to engage in battlefield banter. The seemingly pointless battle
narrations and verbal streams of consciousness served to calm the
soldiers' nerves, keeping morale high while still ensuring focus on
the task at hand. He learned quickly that Ion did not subscribe to
such methods; talking carried too much of a risk of revealing their
position to nearby enemies. “If we were still merely training,”
Ion had told him, “and enemies were not a factor, then perhaps I
wouldn't mind a little conversation. But now, we must keep silent.”

This
total silence is going to drive me crazy, Troy
thought.
If Ion won't banter with me, then I'll have to banter with myself.
God, I hate these lousy phragmites—I'll be blowing the damn seeds
out of my nose all night! I'm gonna come out of here with a case of
hay fever. Okay, good, we're finally nearing the end of this patch.
Oh, hello, what's this? Is that...is that a little boy out there in
the field?

Ion's
lanced clicked into position, his finger resting beside the drill
switch. “Ready your projectiles,” he ordered Troy in a whisper,
“and wait here.” Troy obeyed, removing his missile piercer from
its holster. They dismounted the horses and Troy took his position
behind a row of large, leafy shrubs. Ion approached the boy, his
lance held at his side. The boy was about thirteen or fourteen years
old, with the unkempt hair and dirty face that was quite
characteristic of boys at that age. He wore a loose button-up shirt
that looked as if it had seen better days, and thick black pants with
holes in the knees and ankles. He was unnervingly skinny and willowy
for a boy, and where is skin was not pinked with the sun's heat, it
was pale as milk cream. He's
a ragamuffin, that's for certain, Ion
thought as he looked upon the the boy's stained face with sympathy.
But
still, he is not to be trusted. “Good
afternoon, lad,” Ion said cordially. The boy turned to look at him
without a word.

“This is an awfully
peculiar place to find a young lad,” Ion went on. “Is there
anybody with you?”

“Nobody's with me,” the
boy replied monotonously.

“Are you waiting for
somebody?” Ion asked.

“No.”

“You should not be here,
nor anywhere near here,” Ion said sternly. “This is not a place
for boys. Do you know where you are?”

“I don't,” said the
boy, drawing his knees up to his chest. He looked every bit the
vulnerable, wayward vagrant, but Ion's suspicions were too high to
feel any pity. “Then come with me,” he told the boy, “and I
will take you into the city.”

“I was already in there,”
the boy replied, still without expression. “They told me that there
was no place for me there and they turned me away.”

Impossible,
thought
Troy, overhearing the conversation. There's
no way a city like that wouldn't have a place for lost kids.
Ion's suspicions were similar, but he was unsure of where to go from
there. His experience with vagrant children was quite limited; every
so often they were brought into the palace, and from there they were
either sent off to the children's home or turned back into the world
with food in their bellies and warmer clothes on their bodies. If the
boy was telling the truth, then Rasta City, in spite of its
prosperity, must not have had the necessary resources to provide for
a stray during wartime. Still, he could not be trusted to stay with
the knights, nor could he remain out here in the fields where his
life was in danger. In a moment of quick thinking, Ion told him, “My
comrade, Lovisa, might know what to do with you. She is a kind young
maiden with a talent for caring for others. I will take you to her.
Come with me.”

The boy drew back, and Ion
looked into his eyes sternly. “If you remain here,” he told him,
“I cannot guarantee your survival. This is a war zone. There is
danger everywhere, even if it cannot be seen.” There was no way
out. With a sigh, the boy stumbled to his wobbly feet. Ion held out
his hand. The boy took it and instinctively pulled back when Ion
tightened his grip. His grip on the boy's hand was nearly as tight as
his grip on the lance, and any attempts to escape would have hurt
much more than helped. Ion motioned for Troy to come out of hiding,
and Troy returned his weapon to its holster so that it would not
frighten the boy. If he was alarmed by Troy's sudden appearance, he
did not show it. He did not even look at him.

“Those ain't real
horses,” the boy said critically when they reached the automaton
horses.

“They do everything a
real horse can do,” Ion said, “and more besides.” He lifted the
boy up onto the horse's metal back and then climbed up behind him.
“They do not stop to graze, or to rest,” Ion went on. “They can
travel at speeds that real horses can only manage in their dreams.
They can withstand blow after blow, should we be ambushed on
horseback. Real horses do not compare. Why, if horses such as these
existed back in my homeland...” With a pang, he recalled the
humiliating defeat that he had never really had to face. Would such a
defeat have been possible with a sturdy metal horse like this one?
Even if he had been thrown off...

“You're not from around
here?” the boy asked, interrupting Ion's thoughts. “Where is your
homeland?”

“I'd rather not give such
information to a lad I've only just met,” Ion said firmly. “You
do not have to know such things.”

Lovisa had been warned
against taking this boy anywhere near the Palace of the Jewel, but
what better place was there to take him? “Bring him into the city,”
Troy had instructed her. “Regardless of what he says, there's got
to be a place in the city for him to go.” In Eridell, there were no
large cities, and entire villages were small and stable enough to
take in and care for children like this boy until they could make it
on their own. Lovisa herself had worked with several children like
this, and she loved each and every one of them so dearly that she
made a point to catch up with them long after they were able to move
on. But a sprawling city such as Rasta's capital, with so many people
to feed and entire armies to provide for during wartime, could never
have the resources to do such a thing, no matter how prosperous.

The
boy sat tensely and rigidly on the back of Lovisa's horse, and his
stony face remained fixated on the passing phragmites, weeds, and
tall, green grasses. He hadn't spoken to Lovisa once, or even looked
at her. “He is not to be trusted,” Ion had warned her, “at a
time when anyone could be an enemy.” The boy's emotions were
entirely hidden, but Lovisa had a feeling that he knew he was
distrusted. Either way, he must have been frightened; being bounced
around from place to place by strange people would frighten any young
man, enemy or not. Even
if he is an enemy, he is a child first, Lovisa
thought, and she gently patted the boy's knee. “Don't worry,
honey,” she said reassuringly, “we'll find something for you. I
promise that we won't turn you out into the world.” The boy
stiffened when she patted him, and he didn't look at her or respond.

Lovisa turned to Sanjaia,
trailing behind them on his own horse. She had asked for him
specifically when the boy had been turned over to her, and now he was
there to do what she needed of him; “Play a song, Sanjaia,” she
told him. “I think we both might like a little bit of music.” And
so Sanjaia unstrapped his lute and began to strum. The tune that he
built up to was a soothing, lilting melody that reminded Lovisa of
breezes and ocean waves in calmer times. She could feel the boy
beginning to relax, leaning back so that his head rested on her
torso.

They
passed by one of the sandy roads that led to the Palace of the Jewel,
and Lovisa longed to be able to take the boy there, where he could
have a bed and some of the good food that the servants had left that
morning. It seemed as though he had not had either of those things in
quite a while. Perhaps
I should take him to Eluani, Lovisa
thought on a whim. Her
clairvoyance would tell her who he is and if he's hiding anything.
This
course of action seemed the best; yes, they would take him to Eluani.
She would read him, assess him, determine exactly who he was and why
he was here...But
what if it's wrong? Lovisa
thought then. What
if she gets a bad reading? Besides,
Eluani wasn't the least imposing presence to place before a displaced
child. She was sharp, blunt, and no-nonsense, her gentle side hidden
under layers of rigidity. It would be difficult even for a
clairvoyant to read somebody who was sufficiently anxious and
intimidated.

The
Jewel could identify its enemies, Lovisa
mused. It was only a throwaway thought, but the more that she thought
of it, the better it sounded. The Jewel had identified its friends
long before they had even set foot in Rasta—surely, it could
identify an enemy on its own soil. Of course, she had been ordered
not to take the boy to the palace...

The sign that marked the
entrance to Rasta City had come into view when Lovisa drove her horse
to a sudden halt. “Sanjaia,” she said urgently, “look after the
boy. Give him some food from my pack. There's something that I have
to do!”

“What?” Sanjaia drove
his own horse to a halt. .”You can't leave us here alone! What if
there's an attack?” At this statement, the boy's eyes grew wide.

“Then protect him!”
Lovisa said, tossing Sanjaia her pack. Before another word could be
said, she and her horse were darting off in the direction from which
they had come. There was nothing else to be done. Sighing, Sanjaia
dismounted his horse and helped the boy off the back of Lovisa's.
“Come with me, lad,” he said, taking him by the hand. “We've
got to find somewhere to lay low.”

“I can fight,” the boy
said. “When you live a life like mine, you've got to fight."

“In that case,” Sanjaia
said, “perhaps you will have to protect me!” He hid his unease
beneath a light chuckle.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Today
we would be reaching the conclusion of the knight and the fairy queen
story, so I decided that we could start on one of my novels, A
Dragon's Pride. When
I showed the book to Apple Blossom, she was instantly drawn to the
digitally-illustrated book jacket and the white bold print used for
the title. Jadeite books are printed on rudimentary hand-crafted
presses and illustrated with painted images that you can feel the
paint on if you trace over them with your finger. Apple Blossom
probably spent a good ten minutes just looking at the book jacket,
marveling over the typed words, and tracing her own finger over the
illustration of a dragon looking out over the land from a plateau.
“You're supposed to read the book,
Apple
Blossom,” I teased, “not the cover!”

“I know,” Apple Blossom said.
“It's just that this is more of a work of art than just a book.”

“Humans consider their books to be
works of art,” I said. “Now let's get started, shall we?”

For
a writer, there is no better feeling than knowing that other people
are interested in and even like the things that you write. In fact,
interest and praise from others can drastically change your own
perception of your writing. I've always considered A
Dragon's Pride to
be mediocre; good enough to read when you have nothing else to. The
fact that other people liked the book enough to buy it did nothing to
increase my own enjoyment of the story. As I've said before, I very
rarely enjoy my own stories.

But
as I read the story to Apple Blossom and she took it all in with her
characteristic interest and enthusiasm—asking questions, making
comments, smiling, laughing, even interrupting to spin entire
conversations before I veered us back into the reading—I realized
that A Dragon's
Pride
wasn't mediocre at all. It was interesting. It was entertaining. It
was a real page-turner. It brought smiles to the faces of its readers
and inspired questions in their minds. The narrator, a dragon named
Uglorr who lived in a world where dragons were few and far between,
was a likable character that made readers care about him enough to
make comments on his narration and his goings-on. When we made it to
the end of the chapter, I learned that he was the kind of character
that made a reader ask what was going to happen to him next, and his
story was the kind of story that produced the question, “When can I
hear more?”

“Tomorrow,” I told Apple
Blossom, and my own excitement to continue made me positively giddy.
“We'll read a chapter every day, all right?”

“Okay,” said Apple Blossom. “Are
you going to read more from your diary too?”

Aw
man! I had hoped that A
Dragon's Pride would
get her mind off of the diary for a while. “Not today, sweetie,”
I told her. “There are some things in it that are very personal, so
I'll have to find something that it's okay for you to hear.”
Sometimes, I marvel at my ability to cover up the truth without
actually telling a lie. Apple Blossom accepted this answer without
any further questions or comments.

As
I worked at my writing, Apple Blossom was uncharacteristically quiet;
usually she bombards me with questions and comments about what I'm
writing. But today, she was sitting on the floor and drawing by the
light that filtered in through the stained glass window, and her
silence gave me some time to think in that private corner of my mind
where all of my non-writing thoughts go to congregate while I'm
working. I was thinking about what Apple Blossom had said about
“human magic.” Taking photographs was as magical to her as
changing the colors of cranberry greens was to me. TVs, computers,
phones—all perfectly ordinary things in my world—were magical to
her. These things were created by skillful humans who had worked hard
at shaping and perfecting their skills, in the same way that the
Jadeites spend their lives learning to manipulate the jade essences
into usable forms of magic. What other forms of human magic were
there? What other forms had I myself even performed without realizing
it? I thought of her reaction to the fully illustrated,
digitally-printed cover of A
Dragon's Pride; did
she think of the book as a work of magic rather than simply a work of
art? How magical was it that we could produce so many copies at one
time, to be read by hundreds or even thousands of people at once?

My thoughts were interrupted when a
servant escorted Wildflower into the room, and the silence was broken
when Apple Blossom ran to greet her. I set my pen down for a moment
and waved. She was carrying her treasured diary in one hand and a
wood-carved pencil in another. “Let's go outside, Wildflower,”
Apple Blossom said. “We can play Roundabout. You come too, Aidyn!”

“Give me a moment to finish a few
sentences,” I said. “I'll meet you both out there.”

Roundabout is a strange game that
resembles tag, Duck Duck Goose, and Ring of Roses all at once. You
join hands and pull eachother around in a circle, the whole time
trying to break out while you're being pulled. Once someone breaks
out, those still in the circle have to chase them down and try to
pull them back in. It's absolutely mindless fun, produces the silly
giggles in a matter of seconds, and I absolutely love it. After we
played that for a while, we sailed the little flower boats that Apple
Blossom had made over the Bell's Rush, and then Wildflower wanted to
show me some of the magic that she could do: she spun the air around
us into rose-scented breezes that tickled my face, and she
transformed a few old blades of switchgrass into colorful boughs of
cherry, plum, and apple blossoms. As she sat waving one around in the
air and no doubt thinking over what she would like to do next, I got
an idea. “Wildflower,” I said, “would you like me to teach you
how to write the way I do?”

“Yes!” Wildflower answered
immediately. “Yes, teach me!”

I led her over to the garden table
where Apple Blossom often had her lessons and where we often had our
lunches. “We're going to need some blank paper,” I told her. “Can
you tear two blank pages out of the back of your diary for me?” She
did so, and I laid them out in front of her and wrote out the
alphabet, both in capitals and in lowercase:

“Okay, Wildflower,”
I said to her, “I want you to look over these letters for a while.
This is the most commonly-used human alphabet—most of the human
languages use these same twenty-six letters to write.”

“Only these?” she
said quizzically.

“Only these,” I
told her. “Does your writing alphabet use a lot more letters than
these?”

She looked at me as if
tufts of fur had just grown out of my ears. “They just make words,”
she said, and then it was my turn to be confused. “You don't write
with letters?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “we
write letters with words.”

I left it at that and
moved on: “Well, these twenty-six letters make up every word in the
English language—the one that I speak and write—as well as many
other human languages. I don't know any other languages, so we're
only going to worry about English words.”

“You speak Common,”
Wildflower said, “like I do.”

“Yes,” I said, “but
humans call it English. I told you that before, remember?”

“So every word has
all of these in them?” Wildflower asked, looking over the letters
as if trying to unlock their secrets.”

“Well, not every word
has every letter,” I clarified, “but every word has some of these
letters.” She was giving me that look again, so I said, “Here,
let me give you an example. I'm going to use these letters to write
your name.”

“My name is
Wildflower,” she told me matter-of-factly.

“I haven't forgotten,
dear,” I said, patting her on the head. “So, I'm going to write
it using these letters.” I wrote the name underneath the line of
letters:

WILDFLOWER

“That's my name?”
she asked, as astonished as if she had laid eyes on a unicorn. “Yes,”
I said, “that's your name.” I pointed to each letter as I named
them off: “W-I-L-D-F-L-O-W-E-R spells Wildflower. Your name has ten
letters in it—that's a pretty big name for such a little girl.
Would you like me to show you how to write the letters that make your
name?”

Wildflower was a
diligent student. She followed my patient directions with the quiet
enthusiasm she was known for, without any question, comment, or
protest. The only problem arose when she discovered that she liked W
and L better than any of the other letters, and I had to direct her
onto the next letter with some disappointment on her part. “I'm
glad that you like W and L,” I told her. “After all, they are the
only letters that appear more than once in your name. But as I said,
your name has ten letters in it, not just two!”

Apple Blossom
interrupted us before she could fully grasp the writing of her name.
“What are you two doing over here?” she asked when she found us
sitting at the table writing instead of playing.

“That's wonderful!”
chirped Apple Blossom. “But it isn't lesson time! We ought to be
playing! Come and climb with me, please! It gets awfully lonely way
up in a tree all by yourself.”

“How can I argue with
that?” I said, chuckling a little. “Come on, Wildflower, let's go
give her some company at the top of that big tree.”

She
set the pencil down and took off running, and the three of us entered
a race that neither me nor Wildflower had any chance of winning
(though I was nice enough to lag behind so that Wildflower could take
second place). I climbed up to the middle branches of the tree, and
there I sat and I thought. It
isn't lesson time, Apple
Blossom had chided us. She had regular lessons with Beryl in the
mornings throughout the week. I wasn't entirely sure how the Jadeite
education system worked; Jadeite kids don't attend school like human
kids do. But do all Jadeite children have private teachers like
Beryl, or was that a privilege for the royalty and aristocracy? Was
Wildflower going to have a teacher someday when she was older?

Or...could I be her
teacher?

Wildflower is the kind
of eager, dutiful student that every teacher wants to have. She
listens patiently, follows directions, rarely gets sidetracked and is
easily redirected when she does, and above all, she looks up to me
like I'm some kind of sage of knowledge. If anything, I could be her
unofficial writing teacher. I had already taught her how to use a
diary, I had already inspired her to take up and to love writing—and
a mentor's duty, first and foremost, is to inspire.

I looked at Wildflower,
who was sitting right beside me and playing with a butterfly that had
perched on her finger. I had a feeling that she was going to write
about that butterfly. She was going to write about this day. She was
going to write about the nice human that had taught her to write
those Ws and Ls that she liked so much.

About Me

I'm Star Nova, and I like to tell stories. This blog used to be more topical, but then just became a place where I could easily hold my stories. I have several short stories and two big works in progress, as well as some old crap and some pending revisions OF some old crap.
I write in order to share how I see the world, from my own perspective. If you're here, you're probably here from Tumblr or Twitter. I hope you like my stories. And if you don't, I hope you at least read them before you decide that. (: